The only way is ethics

By Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove

One of the most impressive companies we have encountered is the family-owned foods business, Mars. It began life in 1911 when Franklin C. Mars made the first Mars candies in his kitchen in Tacoma, Washington. The business was later run by Forrest Mars Jr. and the family is still actively involved.

Mars is built around adherence to five principles – quality, responsibility, mutuality, efficiency and freedom. The principles are available in book form and are given to all associates. Of course, many companies have similar statements of what matters to them – values, missions, goals and so on fill the flimsy walls of corporate buildings throughout the world. Most are as decorative as they are generic.

Countering such cynicism, Pamela Mars-Wright injects a note of realism:

‘It would be unfair to say that other companies don’t exercise their principles. They do. I don’t by any stretch of the imagination want to say that Mars is so much better than other companies. You can always find things that you talk about that you don’t practice as well as you should. At the end of the day, businesses are still run by human beings so, as a result, we make mistakes, but we really do practice our principles and expect our associates to practice them.’

The five principles are the cornerstone of Mars’ culture and management. Associates new to the business are embraced through an ‘Essence of Mars’ course, which aims to provide the foundation for early success in their careers at Mars. Training courses are available globally, in twenty-two languages, and aim to support associate development and understanding of how to apply Mars’ five principles to their work and business decisions. More than 40 percent of Mars associates every year participate in learning programs worldwide through Mars University. This is equivalent to 400,000 learning hours every year.

Mars (with annual sales of $33 billion) is proof that the greatest leadership has an ethical element. Always.

At the end of the 1980s we spent an afternoon with the great management thinker Peter Drucker. He recounted stories of encounters with Sigmund Freud when he was a child in Vienna, coming to London to work with the Economist, his first break working with General Motors when he settled in the United States. He told us of his love of Trollope and of rereading Jane Austen every year to remind himself what great writing is. And, talking about his books, he observed that there was one big book which everyone in the business world aspires to write: How to Make a Million and Still Go to Heaven.

Drucker’s joking suggestion of a book title has a serious point. Greatness and goodness lie at the heart of many of the discussions about how best to manage, lead and shape organizations.

At times the two appear mutually exclusive. Business greatness in terms of financial results is regularly achieved at the expense of any notion of ethical behavior. Companies can appear, feel and be amoral, sometimes pursuing unethical means to achieve their commercial ends.

At the same time, we have all encountered organizations whose pursuit of goodness, a moral agenda, has limited their commercial achievements.

Truth be told, even in this age of Corporate Social Responsibility, employee engagement and much more, the number of companies achieving commercial success through enlightened working practices and policies within clear ethical guidelines remains painfully small in number. Think of some names of the corporate great and good and they are likely to number less than the fingers of one hand.